Mark Pestrella wasn’t born with a passion for public service, but, as in a proverbial coming-of-age story, fire transformed him at the age of 17. In 1980, he and his family lost their home and humble possessions to the Panorama wildfire, sparked by an unknown arsonist in San Bernardino County, Calif. While still overcoming his loss and anger, he went to college and became a civil engineer. When he later entered the public sector workforce and started helping people, “I realized how much that is cathartic,” he says. “It gives you the opportunity to do something … prepping people for the risk in life as much as we can.”

As director of Los Angeles County Public Works 45 years later, Pestrella finds himself again tried by wildfire. Just two months ago, he nearly lost his home a second time to the Mountain Fire, barely saving it by staying behind to fight flames alongside his son. Now, he is in the midst of the worst fire outbreak in Southern California history, which has repeatedly tested key infrastructure. “It just seems like there’s no end to the incident. It’s like a conflagration of incidents that are connecting, requiring response and of course, leadership, to collaborate and think and plan together, unlike anything I’ve seen here in LA County.”

Serving more than 10 million people at the nation’s largest municipal public works agency, Pestrella leads a team of 4,000 employees with an annual budget of $4.1 billion. The agency currently oversees more than 500 active construction projects along with providing vital infrastructure services.

But even with all that clout, Pestrella realized it was not enough for the agency to go it alone to mitigate major calamities—fire, atmospheric rivers, earthquakes—and large events poised to stretch LA regional infrastructure to the breaking point, such as the 2026 FIFA World Cup and 2028 Olympics. But as a master collaborator, Pestrella has fostered the interagency partnerships to not only prepare for such incidents, but also to help communities build more resiliently and equitably.

With that goal, he envisioned and co-founded InfrastructureLA several years ago with agencies LA Dept. of Water and Power, LA Metro, Los Angeles World Airports and others, to provide a platform for collaboration, project coordination and alignment to pursue funding holistically rather than as siloed agencies. “As much as you may want to do things on your own, you have to have the humility to understand that you don’t control anything in your life on your own, that every success has to do with all the parts working together,” Pestrella says. “So I just apply that philosophy to both life and to leadership.”

Key accomplishments include adopting the LA County Water Plan, drawing around $2.5 billion in federal funding for projects and preparing infrastructure and transportation routes for the World Cup and Olympics [ENR collaborates on an annual conference with InfrastructureLA].

“He is a leader not only deeply committed to enhancing the infrastructure in Los Angeles but also fostering a culture of collaboration, equity and sustainability,” says TJ Moon, assistant deputy director of LA County Public Works. “InfrastructureLA, under Director Pestrella’s leadership, has become a model for how regions can collaborate and improve infrastructure to maximize funding for the benefit of our residents.”

Other regions have begun to emulate InfrastructureLA’s success. Terri Mestas, former Los Angeles World Airports chief development officer and group representative, joined Seattle’s Sound Transit in 2024 as deputy CEO for megaproject delivery, managing about $54 billion in future infrastructure work. “I was so excited about the work we did at InfrastructureLA that I pitched the idea to the Port [of Washington] and to

WSDOT … and they said, ‘we’re all in. Let’s figure out how we can get this done,’” she says.